Container Conundrums: Some of Morrison’s Trickiest Assignments

You’ve seen it before, an eye-catching new container your marketing team has developed in hopes to grow your brand and update your presence on the shelf. While this new container is appealing to the eye, your current container handling machinery isn’t equipped to run this container.

Even with the trickiest container designs, if it is rigid or semi-rigid, it is no match for timing screw machinery. In our more than 50 years in the industry, we’ve handled some tough ones. Take a look at a sample of some of our trickiest containers we’ve designed screws around.

A common household item, Duct Tape, is often found wrapped or sleeved in the packaging process. We developed a solution in which the rolls of tape are accepted through dual timing screws from a backlog and placed them onto a Tripack puck conveyor to fully sleeve the product downstream.

While we are container handling experts, we have also developed systems to handle “raw” products as well. 

For example, we created a drive unit system designed to accept ammunition rounds from a backlog via a chute feed and inverted them 90 degrees for an inspection machine. The inverting system utilized a timing screw and twist assembly to invert the product.

3. Brita Filters

The trusty Brita Filter provides us with clean water with the ease of a pour, but have you ever wondered red how that Brita Filter finds itself wrapped in a box and on the shelf?

Utilizing a Timing Screw Drive Unit we engineered a solution to accept containers from backlog and feed the infeed of a wrapping machine. The drive unit was driven from the output shaft of the machine, so the timing screw was synchronized with our customers’ system.

 4. Frozen Dough Balls

When designing solutions for our customers we ask about the conditions of their facilities, such as temperature, humidity, and more, because this can drastically impact how the product runs through packaging equipment.

This next solution is a great example of how temperature can play a role in your container handling process.

Here we have a timing screw drive unit designed to accept frozen dough balls from a backlog and feed a lug system. Understanding the environment of the facility was important in this scenario, as dough changes shape as it thaws.

5. Lunchables

Did you ever wonder how your favorite childhood snack was packaged? The video shows a great example of how shingle infeed rails help create separation between square and rectangle containers.

By bringing the containers into the timing screw on an angle, a natural separation is created, and the timing screw has a contact point to control the containers. Once the separation is created, the containers are rotated 90 degrees for packaging pattern requirements. A third overhead timing screw then takes control of the containers, and they are placed directly over the lug conveyor and dropped into the appropriate slot.

6. Frozen Pizza

Another frozen solution -- Morrison has also had the pleasure of working with frozen pizza crusts. Tasked with feeding a single lane of pizza crusts downstream to cartoner, we provided a metering solution through timing screw technology.

7. Glass Ampoules

Glass ampoules, well known throughout the medical field, can be tricky due to their delicate nature. In a solution we provided for a past customer, our team designed a timing screw drive unit that accepted ampoules from mass feed, which

fed perpendicular into the timing screw. The ampoules were supported by a back pressure arm and rail that continued to drive ampoules into the timing screw pockets. The timing screw then single filed the product and twisted the ampoule 90 degrees to be on the bottom side of the timing screw, and handed off to a “split lug conveyor” for the downstream application.

8. Syringes

Coming in at number eight, another product belonging to the medical field, syringes. Here we designed a system

in which we used a timing screw set that fed and oriented syringes. Once in the timing screw, we utilized rails to orient the syringes and face the “flanges" in a consistent manner to feed into the magazine. The last portion of the system included a simulation of transferring the syringes from the timing screw into the magazine. 

9. Triangle Bottles 

Commonly seen in households and pharmacy shelves, this solution is designed to accept full and capped triangular containers from a backlog and space them with nominal 1/8" spacing. Utilizing a servo-controlled timing screw, accelerating and decelerating the screw as required to create the groups needed for our customer.

Commonly found in the food industry, flexible square containers can be tricky due to their malleableness and ability to bend while being handled down the line. Here is a solution we designed using timing screws to automate the manually intensive process of denesting trays onto a production line. 

Have a tricky container that can give us a challenge? We want to see it! Contact your local sales representative today to discuss solutions that can improve your throughput and efficiency.